Lufthansa flights delayed and canceled due to major IT outage
Germany's flagship carrier Lufthansa's flights were delayed and canceled due to a major IT outage on Wednesday. The group's airlines across the world were affected by the outage. "Currently, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage," the airline said. "This is causing flight delays and cancellations. We regret the inconvenience this is causing our passengers," it added.
Outage caused due to damage to Deutsche Telekom's cables: Lufthansa
According to the German paper BILD, due to the outage, no flight plans can be created, no data can be transmitted, and no planes can take off. Lufthansa said that the outage was caused as a result of damage to glass fiber cables of Deutsche Telekom during construction work in Frankfurt. It expects flight operations to stabilize by early evening.
The outage has affected group's airlines worldwide
Frankfurt airport canceled 120 in and outbound flights
Reports of Lufthansa flight disruptions began at around 7 am GMT (12:30 pm IST), according to the Frankfurt Airport website. About 120 in and outbound flights at the airport were canceled. Lufthansa flights were no longer able to depart from the airport and were parked there. Due to this, parking positions were not available to other aircraft as well.
Flights in the air won't be brought down: Lufthansa
Per Bloomberg, Lufthansa grounded all of its flights. However, the company said that it could not confirm that. A Lufthansa spokesperson said, "There are still flights in the air, they will not be brought to the ground." According to data from the aviation website FlightRadar24, several Lufthansa flights are still stuck at Frankfurt Airport. Most are, however, delayed rather than canceled.
Seven German airports will be affected by the strike
Lufthansa's IT system failure comes two days ahead of planned strikes at seven German airports. The strike led by United Services Union, a German trade union, is expected to bring air traffic to a complete standstill. The strike will affect seven German airports, including Frankfurt, Munich, and Stuttgart, among others. The workers demand an improvement in their wages.
NOTAM outage affected over 11,000 flights in the US
Lufthansa's outage comes a month after the NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) outage that affected over 11,000 flights in the US. The outage was caused due to accidental deletion of files by contractors working on the system. Similarly, Scandinavian airline SAS also suffered an outage earlier this week. It was hit by a cyber attack.
